


The Summer You Let Your Hair Grow Out

by gross_batpanda



Series: Chicagoland [6]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - Punk, Chicago (City), Denial of Feelings, Drugs, Grooming, Gross, M/M, Making Out, Photography, Underage - Freeform, sexual predator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 20:44:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7589464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gross_batpanda/pseuds/gross_batpanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title from a Pansy Division Song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Summer You Let Your Hair Grow Out

Alex notices that the camera’s out on the coffee table a good week before George so much as tries to use it during one of their sessions with Ben. It’s definitely an upgrade from the one he remembers, which had a tendency to overexpose on the left-hand side, the black background peeling into shades of pink and white as if a match had been set to it. This one looks nicer, newer.

He knows he’s never been George’s main target, more like an accomplice, or at best a co-conspirator. But hey, guilt is useless, pleasure only fleeting, so Alex remains steadfast in his pursuit of self-preservation. He can't afford to take care of Ben, and himself, too. It sucks, but that’s just how it has to be.

The camera is out for Ben: to capture Ben, to document the inevitable way that George will use him up until there's only dust remaining. He turns eighteen soon enough, sometime after school starts back up again. He’ll be a senior this year, headed off to college the next. Alex has never known George to tarry with anyone once their shelf life is up, and Ben is sure to be no exception to that ingrained pattern. Alex idly wonders if he'll have the stomach to say anything, or if he'll simply be left to pick up the pieces when George decides, all at once, irrevocably, that he's finished. Ben will be a wreck, devastated. You should have known, he will want to say, but he simply won’t be able to. How was he to know?

As for George? He's pretty silent the few times the two of them mess around alone. It's habit. It’s convenient. It's payback for God knows what. Alex sucks some dick, George comes all over his own stomach, then slaps his cheek, good-naturedly. They both go back to their smokes and their books. Music on the stereo, Snapple pink lemonade in the glass bottle mixed with lukewarm Smirnoff, cheese fries from the diner congealing in their styrofoam box on the coffee table.

Since the awkward conversation about Ben that one time they’ve avoided the topic directly, but Alex feels obligated to keep an eye out. He calls Ben, sometimes, from the phone at the record store, or he takes him out for hash browns and watery, burnt coffee before driving him to the train station. Not the one nearest to where he lives but the one right before it, so he can be seen stepping onto the correct platform if anybody catches sight of him coming home so late on a weeknight.

 

///

 

George lets the boys start off slow. Kisses at first, only kisses. That’s all he’s going to have them do tonight. He’ll sit back and wait for the right moment to pick up the camera. He’s been letting the idea build for a few weeks now. Less outright fucking, which is already losing its shine in terms of novelty, though Ben is still tight as a fucking fist. That’s something, and he’s not whoring himself out either, and so he’s only getting it from Alex, or George, and whatever he’s doing to himself when he’s home. He’ll have to ask him sometime what he does when he plays with himself, if he shoves his slender fingers up there; if he can reach all the way. If he’s got a toy at home he uses on himself, a curved piece of flesh-colored plastic, cheap and smelly, that lives in a shoebox in the back of his closet. Maybe he’s been more desperate, inventive, and stuck the end of a taper candle up there. God, what a thought. He'll have to suggest it sometime. 

For now he’s been keeping it light. A casual mention, here and there to steer him in the right direction. He's mentioned how good Ben looks lately, especially with his hair like that. How sexy he is, a few pet names to mix it up. George has always gone in for direct, no need to beat around the bush if you’re calling someone a whore, but this operation requires a delicate touch. Alex takes the opposite approach, all sweet whispers, his hand cupped protectively around Ben’s bird-thin shoulder, cooing filthy praise at him while they jerk one another off.

Tonight he hadn’t even turned the TV on. He’d let Alex pick something mellow for background music, and he flipped the record when the A side ended. Dimmed the lights enough to set a mood, but not so much that using the flash would wash everything out.

He’s been more than happy to sit across from them on the sofa and watch. They’ve been making out leisurely for a good half hour. George refrained from smoking the joint that Alex offered him, even went so far as to refuse a drink. He’d taken a pour but barely wet his lips with it. Nights like this he’d rather stay sharp. The moments he wants to capture are subtle, shifting. Blink and you’ll miss ‘em.

It’s dim and hazy in his apartment. Quiet, too, save for an occasional city bus grinding past outside, or the faint Doppler whine of a cop car or ambulance, hauling some poor bastard with a bullet in his stomach to the trauma center on the north side of town. He’ll be glad when summer’s over and the shootings level off again.

Even inside the air retains some of the afternoon’s heat. George has turned on the fan, rather than the window unit, and the oscillations blow Ben’s too-long hair back from his forehead every few seconds. He’s laid out on Alex’s right-hand side, legs stretched out and his toes skimming George’s thigh. His hair is sticking up all over the place and his cheeks are flushed from the warmth. By this point Ben’s used to ending his nights ending up used. You can tell he wants it, expects it, the dirty little bitch, and is in the process of extending a hand to unzip George’s cock from his jeans when his hand is abruptly slapped away.

Ben looks up, a pleasing question in those soft doe eyes, and for a hot flash George wants to drop the whole game and just let his instincts rip. Shunting aside all the elaborate traps, the soft words and gentle touches. Buying him things. Little compliments about his taste in music rather than his appearance. Letting him stay after hours at the club, and letting him drink; illegal as all get out.

George has a patter that’s a pattern by now. _I know you're young, kid,_ is what he tells them. _But you're not like all the rest of these idiots. You're special. I can see something in you. I can teach you what's good, show you what matters. Look, I'm the only one you need to listen to._

Works like a fucking charm, every goddamn time. Fish in a fucking barrel. Middle children, average students, suburban kids with no redeeming traits of personality other than being soft and impressionable. Ignored by teachers, passed over for the smarter kids; their parents’ second and third favorites. Good but not great. When I was your age, they say, and the kids gnash their fucking teeth in protest, refusing to believe that their parents could ever have been young.

The secret? Treat them with respect but their immediate peers with disdain and condescension. That works fantastically well. And if you let on that you know they've got a secret? That they don't jack it to Susie Q in algebra like the other boys, do they? They read comic books, and watch old movies, and avoid the swimming pool at all costs. Then it's only a matter of finding the right opening, jimmying a knife blade in there, and they pop right open.

Back on the couch, Ben’s look of concern is so sweet that for that one heated moment he wants Alex gone and for the two of them to be alone. And fuck the buildup. To hell with everything he’s worked for, when he could simply throw Ben across his floor and smack his ass pink while he plowed him.

But no, there are collections to be built. He won’t look like this forever, so time is of the essence. George swallows, holds the desire on the tip of his tongue and presses it hard against his teeth. It can wait, he can wait. Instead he leans over to the coffee table, deliberately holding eye contact the whole time. His hand lingers near the black polyester strap dangling from the Polaroid, and he waits until Ben finally notices it, the sudden hiss that comes as he breathes in with the realization. Alex’s hand strokes the flesh of Ben's thin back, beneath his worn t-shirt. They are both watching him to see what he will do.

He looks for reassurance, goddamn it, at _Alex_ , and bites his lip beautifully. “What’s that for?” he asks, so shy and low that even a foot away he's hardly audible. _It's for me,_ he wants to scream _, you're for me, you’re mine. I found you, I made you what you are. Fuck him. Fuck him._

“Nothing intense,” he says, pulling focus away from Alex and back where it belongs, onto him. Idly he picks the camera up and turns it over in his hands. There’s four pictures left in the film pack from the last time he used it several months ago. “Keep doing what you’re doing, okay? I’m just gonna watch from over here.”

Over Ben’s shoulder, Alex rolls his eyes at George. He’s heard this line before, had it used on him, in fact. But he was always quick to see through George’s bullshit. It comes from being actually exceptional as opposed to average, not that he’d ever go so far as to tell Alex that.

Ben bats his eyelashes a few times, like a particularly stupid cow, and then turns to Alex yet again for reassurance. Goddamn it. It was a risk bringing Alex into this whole endeavor, and it may turn out to have not been worth it after all. After they’re finished with this little escapade, he’ll be grateful for him to be gone back to New York and out of his life. The loft is too crowded for three.

But there’s a few more weeks before he takes that eastbound Amtrak, and there’s no time like the present to start Ben on the right path. They'll play more during the school year; less often, more intense. He’ll withhold a little more, get Ben drooling for it so that when he comes into the city, once a week, over the Christmas holidays, he'll be so hard-up for it that George will play him like putty. This part of the game is always enjoyable.

_Is there a boy at school you like? Tell me about him. What does he look like? Does he know? Does he know what a nasty little faggot you are, sweet thing? Don't touch yourself unless I tell you it's all right. You'll come when I say you can. Call me when your parents go out, I want to hear you. I looked at your pictures this week, the ones I took of you. They got me so hard thinking about you. Feel that. Touch me there. Play with my balls. Lick all the way up. Hold yourself open._

If he didn’t know by now what a little exhibitionist Ben was turning out to be, he would take the crease between his eyebrows as a bad sign. If George wasn’t entirely aware how responsive Ben was, then he might have chosen otherwise. But even being kissed, and stroked off, Alex's fingers dextrous and nimble up a shirt or down a waistband, the opportunity is too ripe a temptation to forgo.

“Hey,” he says, and Ben pulls back with that quizzical look on his face. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, chafed from all the kissing, and George presses the button. The flash makes a faint popping sound; Ben winces from the brightness. “Ow,” he says, and wipes a hand across his face as if to erase the spots from behind his eyes. “That hurt.”

The photograph comes into focus as he holds it in his hand. Across from him, Alex twines his fingers with Ben’s and leans in to bite at the tendon on his neck. At that Ben lets out a little squeak and a shudder travels down his whole front side. He looks incredibly vulnerable at that moment. George wants to see it again, to capture it on film so he can look at it forever. “You smell nice,” Alex says, and rubs his stubbled face against Ben’s smooth neck. They’re both high as kites, as pliant and giddy as they’ll ever be.

“Hey,” he says again, in the tone indicating that he’s talking to Alex rather than Ben. George picks up the camera and holds it right in front of his chest. His breathing comes heavy in his chest, like he's just climbed a flight of stairs. “Hey, do that again.”

///

  
Four pictures lie face-up on the coffee table the morning after. It was nice to do that, to make out long and leisurely in a haze of pot smoke, a gentle beer buzz around the temples, while he bit Ben’s neck and rubbed at his stomach beneath his clothes. Nobody got off that night, which was unusual but also enjoyable. 

“Forget him,” he'd said, when Ben kept darting nervous little glances at George, “look at me, okay?”

In the cold light of day, George snoring on his mattress in the back, Alex leans over the coffee table to look at last night’s evidence. There’s one of only Ben, caught unawares by the too-bright flash, his lips slightly parted and his eyes unfocused. The two of them entwined, Ben wrapped up in Alex’s lap with his hands slung loose around his neck. Ben’s shoulder, as evidenced by the few freckles across it, blurry where Alex had reached for him too quickly for George to focus the lens. Ben’s chin in Alex’s hand, a pleased smile playing about his lips as he tips his head back so Alex can mouth at the juncture where his neck meets his t-shirt.

He stares at that one the longest, and when he bails a couple minutes later without saying goodbye, that’s the one he’s got tucked into the pocket of his jeans. Fuck it. He’s owed that at least.


End file.
